I think I have mentioned before that Jake has a mini merc, which is a voice output augmentative communication device. He LOVES it. It has really given him a voice to "sing", and to "talk". He is eager to tell us what he wants to play with, or what he wants to eat by using his mini merc. It has given us a way to communicate with Jake, to know his needs and wants, his likes and dislikes. I know my child, not only on an intuitive level because I am his mother, but that he is telling me…
A few weeks ago, one of Jake's speech therapist introduced a software called Picture Word. Jake's ability to learn the new software has really exceeded my expectations. Granted he is only using a small number of symbols he knows, but already he knows how to navigate through different pages, open and close them appropriately. For example, if he is on any of the song pages, he can get himself out of that page, go all the way back to the main page, find social page and hit the "goodbye" symbol when his therapist gets ready to leave. Or if I ask "Jake, do you want to eat dinner?" He can use Picture Word, and say " I" "want" "eat", then go to the word group page, finds "food & drink", and then with some help, find the symbol for "dinner".
I am very grateful to the Jake’s speech therapist to help us to get the device through Medicaid, I am extremely grateful to another speech therapist who helped me to set up the pages in mini merc. When she first told me let’s set up pages with min. 20 symbols on each page, I thought she was crazy. I thought for one, no way Jake can scan 20 symbols at once and find the one he wants; for two, no way Jake can independently navigate from page to page. He proved me wrong. The Picture Word software he is using now has at least 100 symbols on the main page, and he can find the symbols he wants to find.
I can go on and on about Jake’s device, I am so thankful to technology, I am thankful to Medicaid who paid for it.
